“You have to recognize that you are a visitor into someone else’s space.” – Jessica Delaney, IAP2 Federation Trainer

Core Value 5: Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate.

Core Value 6: Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.

Core Values 5 and 6 remind P2 practitioners that everywhere they go in their profession, they are the outsider. When talking to Jessica Delaney, Mary Hamel, and Cheryl Hilvert, the action they spoke most about in terms of these two Core Values was asking questions. What I learned from them and their stories was how to be a good visitor, who maybe might just get invited back. From what I can tell there are three good rules of thumb:

Don’t assume anything

Ask questions and take the answers seriously

Speak the language

Don’t Assume Anything

It is easy to project our own behaviors onto others. I find x, y, or z comfortable, so everyone else must as well. This can get you into trouble quickly as a visitor. Mary Hamel was able to think quick on her feet in order to avoid this exact issue. She was asked to step into a project as a facilitator in a Wisconsin community that had gone through a contentious mining proposal soon before. She had heard that the community did not like being split into small groups, because they felt like it was a divide and conquer strategy. However, that had been the meeting process the project managers wanted to run as there were about 150 attendees. As Mary began the facilitation the group reacted to the idea of being split up. Prepared for this, Mary worked with her team to reorganize the meeting. To the community being split up was about distrust, and the fact that Mary’s team was willing to rearrange their process help to build that trust back.

Ask questions and take the answers seriously

When I talked with Jessica about Core Value 5, she said it “calls on practitioner to be humble in knowledge and experience with process design.” She described two ways to look to implement Core Value 5. First, you can hold a series of stakeholder interviews. These questions should give power to the interviewee to answer however they choose. Some of the questions Jessica likes to ask include:

What’s of interest to you in this decision?

What’s going to make it easier for you to engage?

What info do you need to engage?

What barriers do you have to engaging?

What don’t I know that I need to know?

Second, you can embed stakeholders into an engagement planning committee or team. Jessica took part in a committee design workshop on opioid substance use that invited patients into the planning team, asked them how to make participants more comfortable, and shaped the process around their input. “They helped us understand that there are many different patient voices going through different journeys. We needed to understand that we were not serving patient populations but a lot patients within a population.” One practical example was that many people recovering from opioid addiction used methamphetamines to help in the process. The use of methamphetamines raises the core body temperature. Jessica and her team kept the room colder than usual to ensure that participants would be physically comfortable during the workshop. This was just one of many insights the patients on the planning team provided. Other advice provided on the engagement design level included timing for breaks, location, and special requirements for those in the program.

Speak the language

Another way practitioners can seem foreign to the communities they enter is with the language they use. Talking about the MX-II zone or Bill HDC-4739J can be alienating. Cheryl talked with me about how important it is to her to take a bit of time to explain the project and the terms that were going to be used in the discussion. Make people feel like they are equipped to participate and provide a sense of self-efficacy.

One way Cheryl did this on a larger scale was to create a citizens leadership academy, a 10-week program to provide education to citizens about the community they live in. The program educated participants on how government is structured, how decisions get made, the highest tax generating businesses, how economic development is organized, and the purpose of community development. Each class consisted of 25 students. Cheryl and her team went out of their way to invite people who weren’t typically supportive of the city.

Cheryl said the best outcome was that community members were now armed with information out in the community helping other citizens understand what was happening in their city. These people became ambassadors in the community. They went on to conduct their own independent citizen education around initiatives in the community. This program empowered people to take what can seem like a foreign language and bring it home.

It’s not enough to put the information up on a website or send out a press release when the community needs to be involved. P2 practitioners have a responsibility to learn how people want to be engaged and then reach out to provide the information they need to do just that. Mary embodied this philosophy in what may be my new favorite quote:

“Telling people the information is on the website is kind of like telling people it’s somewhere in the Library of Congress.”

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This article is the third in a series of articles about the Core Values. Keep an eye out for the next article in upcoming newsletters.

Do you have a Core Values story to share? Please tell us about it here!

July is coming up fast! Train from anywhere and be surrounded by professionals working to improve their skills and hone their techniques! In the month of July we are offering two UNIQUE training opportunities that will give you real, usable tools and techniques to apply in REAL WORLD situations. Nowhere else will you be able to experience the flexibility and usability of online training, at such an affordable cost!

Coming this July:

Participatory Budgeting:Real Money Real Engagement

In this course, trainers from the Participatory Budgeting Project will engage participants in a mock process, from design to the vote, in order to provide a deeper understanding of PB and how it works as a public participation tool. We’ll explore what it takes to start a process and keep it going, how it aligns with IAP2 Core Values, and what components make it a best practice in public participation.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will have:

An understanding of PB and how the process works aligns with the IAP2 Core Values.;

Practical skills for facilitating PB processes.

A greater awareness of the challenges of PB, and ways to overcome them

Too often those decisions are based on the practitioner’s experience or comfort with a particular technique, a project lead or decision maker’s new favorite tool, fears about stakeholder influence or conflict, and so on. While there are always demands and constraints on choices, this course offers a more thoughtful and efficient approach to wisely choose tools and techniques to support stakeholder engagement, meet your project and engagement objectives, and account for key variables including schedule, budget, opportunities, and risks.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will:

Explore various ways to decide about tools and techniques while understanding their value, limitations, implementation considerations, application, and so on

But don’t delay! You have until Friday to cash in at the early-bird rate: $550 for members and $700 for non-members. Your registration fee includes all of the above, plus breakfasts and lunches during the Conference, and the Core Values Awards gala and dinner. Register here.

]]>https://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/28/registration-in-5-easy-steps/feed/0iap2admin-4 early birdSelling the boss on the 2017 North American Conferencehttps://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/26/selling-the-boss-on-the-2017-north-american-conference/
https://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/26/selling-the-boss-on-the-2017-north-american-conference/#respondMon, 26 Jun 2017 20:31:59 +0000http://blog.iap2usa.org/?p=3834

Do you just know that you need to be at the 2017 IAP2 North American Conference in Denver in September, but your manager still needs convincing? These Top Five Reasons should help:

No need to re-invent the wheel – learn from others’ experiences both good and bad. Find out about emerging trends and issues. If you come away with one or two good ideas then you have paid for your conference.

Skill building. There are so many good and effective ways to do public engagement. Find out what they are and bring them back to your workplace.

Networking.Have you ever wanted to pick up the phone or send an email to people that have similar ideas or concerns as you do? How about trying out an idea before you pay for it? Meet those colleagues at the Conference, people are happy to learn and share together.

The conference theme is “P2 for the Greater Good”, and what company doesn’t want to be associated with that.

Good Public Participation = Good Results

Whatever reasons you go with, we hope to see you there. You’ll be in for sessions covering topics running the whole range of the P2 field, as well as “Pathways”: longer “deep-dives” into current P2 affairs, workshops, tours and of course our Core Values Awards Gala.

And remember: there are only a couple of weeks left to get the early-bird rates (another good reason for your manager to make a decision) – US$ 550.00 for members and $700.00 for non-members! As of July 1, those rates go up by $100. We’re also getting a great rate at the host hotel, the Westin Downtown: US $189/night if you book by August 6. See the Conference website for details.

Are you with a company that supplies or supports public participation? The 2017 IAP2 North American Conference is the ideal way to connect with future partners and renew acquaintances with current and past ones.Sponsorship opportunities are available to suit any size company or organization: have a look at the Sponsorship Application Kit to find out more!

Think back to Spring 2016. Where were you? Well, if you were an IAP2 USA board member, you were in a hotel conference room making a key decision – to develop a strategic communications plan for our community. We decided to “un-jargon” our own language to make it easy for our clients, participants and the community-at-large to grasp the benefits of quality involvement and to motivate all of us to continually enhance our skills.

Over the course of 2016, your Communications Committee led itself through a thorough planning process. We identified audiences and partners, evaluated our unique place in the marketplace of services and organizations, dove into the underlying concepts of what the organization needs to say now and into the future, and developed messaging that is clear and direct.

Our core message has two parts – both centered on the concept of “good” skills and outcomes:

“Pursuing the greater good: good decisions made together.”

In combination with the brand and its logo, this phrase positions IAP2 USA as a wise guide through a complex process. It defines how good decisions are made and enlarges the realm of possibilities for all that goodness. The phrase is meant to be flexible, so you’ll see it as a whole as well as its component parts in communications.

Once we created our foundation message, it was time to start building the visual framework to represent and communicate this messaging. You likely have already seen small sneak-peeks of this messaging in recent communications. The first unveiling of it was for this year’s 2017 North American Conference theme:

“Pursuing the greater good: P2 in a changing world.”

You’ll start seeing this “good” messaging in other resources.The most profound change you may have seen is the recent changes to the website. Our homepage now showcases “Good People”, “Building Good Skills”, and “A World of Good”. These updates visually represent some of the underlying meanings of “good” – internally consistent and transparent in its organization, so that people who visit us are put at ease from the moment they walk into our virtual doors. This look and feel of the homepage has been implemented across the entire site! Take a look! In the coming months you will also see changes to the blog.

We are now designing merchandise incorporating our new messaging! We are excited to include it into our new Ambassador Kits for trainers and outreach members from our staff and volunteers. Quick note – we are working on this now the kits will be available in September. If you are interested in being an IAP2 USA Ambassador in your region, let us know! Contact Amelia at ameliaiap2usa@gmail.com. You are an essential part of our community and you can help it be even stronger in your region.

We invite you to incorporate “good” messaging into your language. The more consistent we are as a community, the more we will help distinguish IAP2 USA as a trusted resource for our clients and the participants in their decisions.

We joined IAP2 USA because it is where we turn for good information and professional development. We know that public participation has the potential to solve a lot of problems. Now, it’s time to let everyone else know what good decisions and this organization are all about.

Summer is here and we are excited about these upcoming courses. We have three new courses just for YOU! You can expect that every one of these courses will give you real, usable tools and techniques apply in REAL WORLD situations. Topics include Participatory Budgeting, Social Media, Evaluation, and Tools & Techniques selection. There is a course to fit every p2 professional no matter your experience level or area of discipline.

Participatory Budgeting:Real Money Real Engagement

Starting in July!

In this course, trainers from the Participatory Budgeting Project will engage participants in a mock process, from design to the vote, in order to provide a deeper understanding of PB and how it works as a public participation tool. We’ll explore what it takes to start a process and keep it going, how it aligns with IAP2 Core Values, and what components make it a best practice in public participation.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will have:

An understanding of PB and how the process works aligns with the IAP2 Core Values.;

Practical skills for facilitating PB processes.

A greater awareness of the challenges of PB, and ways to overcome them

Choosing the Right P2 Tools:Workshops, Surveys, & Tours – Oh, My!

Too often those decisions are based on the practitioner’s experience or comfort with a particular technique, a project lead or decision maker’s new favorite tool, fears about stakeholder influence or conflict, and so on. While there are always demands and constraints on choices, this course offers a more thoughtful and efficient approach to wisely choose tools and techniques to support stakeholder engagement, meet your project and engagement objectives, and account for key variables including schedule, budget, opportunities, and risks.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will:

Explore various ways to decide about tools and techniques while understanding their value, limitations, implementation considerations, application, and so on

Social Media & Public Participation:Taming the beast

Coming September 2017!

We know that online tools reach new participants and enable different kinds of conversation. But, it’s an emerging field and there is still much trial and error, so this short online course will give you a leg up in understanding and using digital engagement tools.

This online course will cover foundational concepts of digital engagement, consider its benefits and risks, and explore strategic frameworks for determining which online tools to use. You will learn the basics of how content gets seen on social media, and have an opportunity to strengthen the impact of your social media posts.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will:

Define objectives for their engagement efforts and understand how to apply these objectives to develop an online participation strategy

Identify challenges to participation in digital environments and be aware of approaches that may address these challenges

Understand the range of ways people may participate online, and increase their knowledge of available tools

Evaluation & Public Participation:Finding where you stand

Coming October 2017!

Evaluation should always be useful, and this introductory course will cover theories and practical strategies to help you evaluate your public participation efforts. In this online course, you will examine the differences between process and impact evaluation, and review the components of a basic evaluation plan. You will craft evaluation questions, and identify indicators and consider sources of information to help you answer those questions. Above all, you will learn how to employ evaluative thinking as a learning strategy, in order to strengthen your work and achieve greater impact.

Learner Outcomes

At the end of this online course, participants will:

Determine the most appropriate type(s) of evaluation for a P2 project

Describe the difference between process and impact evaluation, and specify indicators to help measure both areas

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settling a question without debating it.” – Joseph Joubert

Let’s see if we can’t do both. In order to successfully debate a question and settle it we need Core Values 3 and 4, which tell us to include everyone who may be impacted by the decision and to use their input to reach a sustainable decision. To fully explain the role these Core Values play, I’ll be sharing three stories that were told to me when I interviewed Susanna Haas Lyons, Wendy Lowe, and Doug Sarno.

Core Value 3:Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.

Core Value 4:Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision.

In explaining how these Core Values operate, Wendy described a venn diagram that is used in the IAP2 training manual illustrating the attributes of potential solutions during a decision-making process. Once circle includes options that are affordable, the second includes ones that are technically sound, and the third options that are publicly acceptable. “What we as P2 practitioners are trying to do is to find the sweet spot.”

The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project

The US Department of Energy was dealing with a volume of waste in Idaho that was hazardous and radioactive. The DOE prepared an environmental impact statement to find the most appropriate, affordable, and technically sound. They engaged the public throughout Idaho and, four years and lots of money later, decided that an incinerator would be the best way to proceed.

However, when they went to get their permit to build the incinerator, they had to check in with the Department of Environmental Quality who asked the DOE which way the wind would blow. That was the moment when the DOE realized they’d more or less forgotten a category of stakeholders: the State of Wyoming. Specifically Jackson, Wyoming where the citizens would be bearing the brunt of the environmental externality. Jackson held a public meeting attended by 500 people that raised $500,000 and killed the incinerator overnight.

This story demonstrates how when you leave out one of the affected parties you cannot know what options are in the publicly acceptable bubble, and can reach solutions that are unable to sustain themselves.

Interestingly, the phrase “including decision makers” wasn’t added to Core Value #3 until 2005 when the Core Values were reviewed. This was one of few substantive changes, but the committee doing the review felt that without this wording the deck would be stacked in favor of the stakeholders. Decision makers are important because they hold the institutional knowledge that populates the options in the bubbles of what is affordable and what is technically sound.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

In 2007, California was undergoing health care reform under Governor Schwarzenegger. Susanna, working for America Speaks, helped convene a statewide forum in which over 300,000 people participated, including many undocumented immigrants. The forum looked at two proposals for reforming health care, what they offered, and the major choices that had to make when deciding between the two. This forum enabled legislators (the decision makers in this instance) to see what their constituents supported and make more informed decisions.

The next step in the process is reaching a sustainable decision. Doug said to me, “Making decisions is pretty easy, implementing them and making those decisions work is where the hard part comes in.” A sustainable decision is the difference between getting public buy-in versus public ownership.

THE FERNALD CLOSURE PROJECT

A former uranium processing facility needed to be closed and its waste disposed in Ohio. There was a huge waste site with wastes that were more or less hazardous scattered throughout. The local community had felt pretty firmly that they did not want this to remain in their backyard. One member of the community in particular, Lisa, was quite vocal about this. And when a workshop was held that used chips for participants to allocate to on- or off- site disposal, Lisa swept all the chips off the board. “I don’t want any of it to stay here.”

Doug told her that was an option, but now it was time to run the math. The facilitators had programs set up that would calculate the number of expected truck trips, traffic accidents, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. that would result from moving all of the waste from Ohio to Nevada. As Lisa watched the numbers populate she turned to Doug and said, “We can’t do this.”

In the end about 90% of the waste by volume remained in an on-site disposal facility. Most of the more hazardous material was moved off-site. The area is now a 900-acre wildlife preserve and education center. There is also a history museum on site that includes a description of this notable public participation process.

Doug described this as “the most fundamental aha moment I’ve had in my career” watching the public participation process move a participant from a “them” to a “we” mentality. This is the full expression of all three circles of the venn diagram. It hits the sweet spot and reaches a sustainable solution that the community not only accepts, it owns.

This article is the first in a series of articles about the Core Values. Keep an eye out for the next article in upcoming newsletters.

Do you have a Core Values story to share? Please tell us about it here!

]]>https://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/22/how-to-hit-the-p2-sweet-spot/feed/0iap2adminCore Values 3 4 Bannercv2 speakersLauren WirtisShow Your Support for the Greater Good!https://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/21/show-your-support-for-the-greater-good/
https://blog.iap2usa.org/2017/06/21/show-your-support-for-the-greater-good/#respondWed, 21 Jun 2017 17:10:46 +0000http://blog.iap2usa.org/?p=3721IAP2 USA and IAP2 Canada are coming together for the second time to help raise funds for our new student scholarship program! The student scholarships help support research in the field, build relationships with universities, and foster the next generation of public engagement leaders.

A Silent Auction will take place on location at the 2017 IAP2 North American Conference in Denver, Colorado Sept. 6 – 8. The theme, “Pursuing the greater good: P2 for a changing world” has already inspired donations of baskets of goodies illustrating the diversity, talents and innovation of our supporters far and wide. Your donation doesn’t have to connect to the conference theme and we welcome all creativity!

Specialized items from your company or organization (also a marketing opportunity)

Food baskets

Subscriptions

Anything else!

Ready to help?

All you need to do is bring your silent auction donation to the conference!

If possible, please send a photo of your item to Anneliese Apel along with any information and/or social media tags you would like included by September 1, 2017.We would love to feature your item and show your organization’s support through social media in the weeks leading up to the conference.

Thank you so much for your help, we need all of it we can get and truly hope you will bring something to contribute!

June 2017 Learning Webinar

Your company or agency is about to embark on a new project that will affect a lot of people and is very technical, very controversial, or both. How do you make sure the public is as engaged as possible?

That’s where facilitation comes in, and in our June webinar, Rebecca Sutherns of Sage Solutions and Kate Bishop of the City of Guelph, Ontario, reprised their popular session from the 2016 IAP2 North American Conference, “Facilitation Matters”.

Facilitation is a specialized skill – which is why there’s an International Association of Facilitators with a certification process – and facilitators can lift the burden of running a meeting and facing sometimes unpredictable crowds off the shoulders of the technical experts. Facilitators do their job, and let the technical experts do theirs.

Facilitation, according to Rebecca and Kate, involves “a structured series of conversations that guide participants to a shared result that they have created, understood and accepted.” It has to be intentional – with attention to detail, experiential objectives and especially an eye towards making it worthwhile for someone to come to a workshop or open house.

Sweat the small stuff: if a poster has incorrect information, the venue is poorly laid-out or even there aren’t enough cups for drinks, the reaction will often be, “What else did they get wrong?” and trust will be damaged.

Ask questions that people can answer: technical explanations may work for technical staff, but if people don’t understand what they’re being asked, the information you get from their responses won’t be of much use. “What they see is what you get”.

Plan for different scenarios: if your main plan goes sideways, you need Plans B and C to fall back on. And if Plan D is what actually happens, the process of planning for the other scenarios will make you more nimble in handling it.

Design to Engage: make it fun – quizzes and prizes can go a long way to make people want to take part. When you do that, the meeting makes people fully involved, rather than passive listeners, and the exercise is truly worth their while.

Plan for “Various Kinds of Smart” (also called “Multiple Intelligences”): different people engage in different ways, and this Howard Gardner chart shows eight such ways. The philosophy that “variety increases inclusion” helps bring as many people as possible into the conversation.

Sometimes, particularly vocal participants or a protest group can disrupt a meeting and side-track proceedings. Setting ground rules at the beginning can help, but you need to be judicious: they can be unnecessary or obvious or even a bit condescending – implying that the facilitator expects that participants are likely to behave poorly in the meeting. They can be provided to, or developed with/by the group.

A good facilitator both anticipates the public’s expectations and shapes them. Kate and Rebecca used four case studies from their own work to illustrate. A traffic calming study; a plan for a community “hub” in a city park, a re-write of an animal control bylaw and developing a community investment strategy, all presented challenges and required customized, deliberate techniques and tools to meet them.

The recording of the webinar, along with collateral materials provided by Rebecca and Kate, is available to IAP2 members on their affiliate website. You can also continue the discussion with Kate Bishop at kate.bishop@guelph.ca or Rebecca Sutherns at rebecca@sage-solutions.org.

The June webinar was very interactive, with people taking part by asking questions and sharing their own experiences. Below, you’ll find some of the remarks made by the participants. Many of the questions were answered in the actual webinar.

But how would you answer them? What are your experiences and insights. This has proven to be a stimulating conversation, and we hope you’ll help keep it going: please use the “Comments” section at the end to do so.

QUESTION TO AUDIENCE:

What are some unexpected situations you’ve had to deal with when facilitating?

Rock band practice upstairs of workshop. Ask about other activities at your event location.

We were part of a national, multi-site public engagement event on, ironically enough, transportation. That Saturday, metro KC had its huge marathon event. Half of our facilitators were trapped on the wrong side of the event and had to go miles out of their way to get to the site. I learned to check for other events after that experience.

Ugh!

For a visioning exercise, I used the dotting exercise (e.g. dotmocracy) to brainstorm guiding principles and narrow in on top 5. After the exercise, one of the participants said he didn’t like the exercise. In hindsight, I should’ve had other mechanisms in my back pocket. And, I should’ve made sure the group is ok with my plan at the beginning of the workshop.

Consultation burnout and other related engagement events occurring at the same time…and creeping into our meeting agenda.

Walls of windows; bumpy walls; walls covered in art

Participants are happy to help with set-up, if asked, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Response from Rebecca: While it’s true many people wouldn’t mind helping, I wonder if it also makes the facilitation team look poorly prepared and less professional, depending on the context.

Sometimes facilitation is not appropriate if you cannot assemble the critical stakeholders. Lower commitment modes engagement (surveys, interviews etc.) might be more appropriate.

Agreed – or for other reasons. This is part of asking questions participants can answer – if they are not well positioned to do so, then don’t ask them.

General questions:

I would be interested in recommended learning resources and tricks of the trade for newer/beginner facilitators.

There is a response to this on the recording re: IAF and also http://sage-solutions.org/training/e-courses/ I’d encourage you not only to deepen your facilitation toolbox with techniques, but also to pursue learning when it’s most appropriate to use each one.

What do you do when there are people protesting outside meeting and media present?

Response from Kate: You should ensure that senior managers or technical experts are present to answer protesters separately and away from planned event. I also commented that I had used this same technique to effectively manage individual vocal participants on a one on one basis.

When you prepare your participants with the background information etc. do you also include group norms or engagement rules?

To facilitate or not to facilitate? How do you decide whether a facilitative session(s) is the right tool for your situation and at this point in time?

What are some effective/successful ways to facilitate meetings (under 20 persons) and take notes at the same time?

Something that we’ve been thinking through recently is the role of electeds (politicians) in a workshop format.

How would you deal with a Steering Committee member whose “hidden agenda” is to derail the process on behalf of his/her stakeholders to ensure that an forthcoming legislated power is not pursued by the municipality – and won’t admit to it?

I’d recommend being as forthright/explicit as reasonably possible. Conflict is more easily handled when it is named and addressed.

What about when the senior manager is the particularly difficult participant?

There are numerous strategies to deal with difficult people and with power differentials in a room. Good process usually trumps bad behaviour. If people are feeling heard through the process, they rarely feel the need to assert their voice in inappropriate ways. In this case, it may also depend on whether the senior manager is also the project sponsor/client. If so, perhaps you can speak to her/him in advance about how s/he can be the most helpful presence possible in the room.

Many facilitations are part of larger efforts to change complex systems. How have you assessed the impact of isolated facilitations within the broader project?

It’s true that individual facilitated meetings are usually part of larger systemic change processes. It’s been my experience that people value being heard, having confidence their feedback will be meaningful/useful, and having their time used well. We do have experience assessing the impact of both individual sessions and the broader processes in which they are embedded.

What tools do they use in face-to-face meetings to gather answers (e.g. Mythbusters quiz)?

This is a very broad question…specific tools would depend on the design of the session – its purpose, size, length, positioning within a larger process, level of strong emotion etc. I’d be happy to answer direct questions on this, grounded in participants’ actual scenarios and do provide facilitation coaching for doing so.

General comment:

For participants’ information – Facilitation Impact Award nominations are open. https://www.iaf-world.org/site/facilitation-impact-awards. The Facilitation Impact Awards (FIA) honour organisations that have used facilitation to achieve a measurable and positive impact as well as the facilitator(s) who worked with them.

By: Lauren WirtisIAP2 USA Intern

Six P2 Practitioners walk into a bar…

There always is more to the story. That’s why I became interested in public participation. As an urban planner, I soon found that there is more to any urban landscape than the underlying zoning, the frequency with which buses are available, the width of the sidewalks, or parks per capita.

“So I’m guessing you heard the story about the group of us in a bar.”“Yea, that’s what I heard.”“That’s part of it.”

This was my introduction to IAP2’s Core Values The story everyone knows and the story everyone doesn’t. Today I’ll share both with you. But first, why are we here? This is the first of a four part series on the Core Values. Today’s article will focus on how the Core Values came to be and Core Values one and two. For each piece I’ll be interviewing trainers, practitioners, and Core Values Award judges. For this piece I talked to IAP2 Founders Marty Rozelle and Lewis Michaelson as well as IAP2 Canada Trainer, Lara Tierney

First things first. The story that always gets told and the one that doesn’t.

Six public participation practitioners walk into a conference in 1989. The punchline- they feel like nobody knows what they do. They meet up at a bar afterwards and share stories, tips, tricks, experiences, and the desire for a network of people with whom to share this experience. They take action and, by 1990 have formed the International Association for Public Participation Practitioners (IAP3). IAP3 was born as an international organization with founding members representing Australia, Canada, and the United States. Conferences were held starting in 1992 in Portland, Oregon.

At the second IAP2 Conference in Alberta, Canada the plan was to develop the Code of Ethics. As participants went into an open space session, they ended up talking about Core Values instead. This was the first day the Core Values were discussed.

“I still have the flip charts from that day. It felt like a piece of history to me, so I held onto it.” – Lewis Michaelson

At the 1995 conference the idea of Core Values was introduced. However, the Core Values weren’t formally adopted until 1999.

It is the six years from when the Core Values were first discussed to when they were adopted that I find intriguing. Indeed, this is where the story becomes more than six practitioners in a bar. By this time the organization had grown and while the Core Values were embraced by members and the Board of Directors, not everyone saw the Core Values in the same way. The main point of contention: should they be directive. In other words, is it the role of IAP2 to say what good public participation is?

Suffice to say there was a good deal of deliberation about this point. The Core Values were being vetted by practitioners with different backgrounds, from different countries, offering different perspectives on what it meant for the Core Values to be universal. They were tweaked, polished, and wordsmithed until they became the bones of P2. All this time they remained directive, but that very fact held up their adoption.

How did they finally come to be adopted? In a way, the decision ended up being decided for IAP2. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came across the Core Values and must have thought that they made sense because they included them in their community relations handbook. Shortly thereafter the board formally adopted the Core Values.

I had assumed that the story of how the Core Values came to be would have been a straight shot from inception to creation to adoption. Not so. Rather it was imbued with what a facilitator I know likes to call “antagonistic collaboration.” Disagreement in order to find the best possible solution.

Core Value #1:Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.

“Imagine driving home from work on long day. You make the final turn onto your street, pull into your driveway, and your spouse is out front putting a ‘For Sale’ sign on front yard. You’ve never talked about selling your home. What’s your first reaction?”

This is one of the scenarios Marty Rozelle poses to the people in her P2 Foundations course, and it instantly captures how personal decisions can feel and how quickly they can stir up our emotions when we feel we’re being left out of the conversation.

As an urban planner, I’m often drawn to the wisdom of Jane Jacobs who said, “There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.” Whether we are practicing P2 in order to create spaces or policies or relationships, humans are the creators and should be at the forefront of the decision-making process.

However, the people creating the process aren’t representative of those being affected by that space, policy, or relationship. As P2 practitioners we have work to find out who is affected but not already at the table. Marty talked to me about how decision-makers often have great intentions but reach the wrong conclusion because the most affected group(s) wasn’t a part of the decision making process.

The most cited reason why people are excluded from a decision is because the decision-makers think the content is too technical. Usually this has more to do with the decision-maker not seeing the forest for the trees. We shouldn’t be asking people if they can take over transportation demand modeling for the local public transit system, but they can answer questions about where they take the bus and if it comes often enough. Does it connect them to the people and places they want to see? On these issues, the general public are experts, and full of information. And it is to them that we must fit our plans.

Core Value #2:Public participation includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.

“If you don’t intend to use their input, then don’t ask them. And that might be okay. That’s why ‘inform’ is on the Spectrum.” – Marty Rozelle

Oftentimes in P2 we’re communicating about complex issues that have technical criteria and requirements that limit the amount of impact the public can have on the decision. P2 practitioners try hard to make people feel a sense of self efficacy amidst the myriad of layers of information, (such as travel demand modeling, construction timelines, constrained budgets, and zoning requirements) to name a few. What I learned from Marty, Lewis, and Lara is to plan, Plan, PLAN ahead in order to be effective. And then follow through.

Plan to find the decision people can truly influence. Plan for who you need to reach and where to reach them. Plan what questions you’ll ask. Plan for what answers you might get. What happens if the pick they option you weren’t expecting? What happens if the decision is split 50/50? What will you do if no one takes your survey? What will you do if 5,000 people take it?

Plan because people deserve to have a say in the decisions that affect them and the only thing worse than not giving them that opportunity is pretending to give them that opportunity, or what Lewis referred to as SCID: solicit-consider-ignore-decide. I asked Lewis what you do if most of the decisions have already been made. He told me, “Keep going through the decision space to find where the decision has not already been made.” If a decision-maker is certain there is nothing to ask, then don’t. Lewis referred to this as decide-announce-defend. Make your decision, give an explanation, and answer follow up questions.

Ensuring that people can see the connection between their input and the outcome – what Lara refers to as creating the “line of sight” – is a crucial part of the follow through once you’ve done all your planning. She cited the example of River Park in Calgary. During the public engagement process, the City of Calgary drew up a board showing how the final recommendations tied back to the themes they heard during the public engagement. The park management plan also acknowledged that some things that were heard were not included in the plan and explained why that was the case. After this process, Lara said that even people who disagreed with parts of the plan often said, “It’s not what I would have done but I see how you got there.”

What the Core Values do is remind us that public participation is more than an exercise in reaching consensus. There are sights, smells, feelings, and memories tied up in the conversation. The more personal they are, the tighter they can work themselves into a knot. The decisions we make matter, especially when they affect other people, and we need to be careful and (more importantly) deliberate in the way we involve them in these decisions. This is the essence of the first two Core Values.

This article is the first in a series of articles about the Core Values. Keep an eye out for the next article in upcoming newsletters.

Do you have a Core Values story to share? Please tell us about it here!